in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. The light reflected from bare twigs at this season ––i.e., since they began to be bare, in the latter part of October––is not only like that from gossamer, but like that which will ere long be reflected from the ice that will incrust them.  So the bleached herbage of the fields is like frost, and the frost like, snow, and one prepares for the other.